Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to provide some input on the ruling of the Speaker and the motion of the hon. member for Outremont to refer this matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
I think that all hon. colleagues understand that this is a very serious issue, to the extent that the member for Outremont has indicated that he has been contacted by the so-called lobbyist with regard to why certain things may or may not have been in the report. I found the same thing. I can assure the House that all possibilities are still on the table with regard to the report of the committee.
As members know, the committee consulted broadly across the country. There were some 455 submissions and about 155 witnesses. All of those participants in the prebudget consultation have an important role to play in terms of making their so-called asks and justifying them before the committee. Obviously we are going to get probably $100 of asks for every $1 that would otherwise be available. That has usually been the case. Certainly it was my experience when I was on the finance committee a number of years ago.
The issue here is not to speculate; it is to find fact. That is the purpose of the referral to the procedure and House affairs committee.
I do not want to speculate but I am personally concerned that the finance committee report will never be issued, because this matter has taken up so much time. The deadline for issuing the report is December 3. It is going to be very difficult for the committee to do an objective job, to be able to present a cogent and thoughtful report for parliamentarians and for all Canadians to see where we have been in terms of leading up to this consultation, the kinds of input we received and the recommendations of the committee as a whole, and possibly some supplementary reports giving the recommendations of individuals or of other parties individually.
It is a very important responsibility and we will be judged by it. The quality of that report will be a significant indicator of the quality of the work of the finance committee and its members. The members take that very seriously. That is why this encroachment and violation of the committee's rights have been taken so seriously.
As a consequence of looking at this matter, when we look at the facts and the details, we would ask ourselves that if there were three leaks, and that is what was represented, anybody who is involved in something like this and understands how serious it is would ask if that was the extent of it. We would want that determined because we need to know what the dimensions of the problem are.
We then heard that there was a fourth and then a fifth. All of this happened at a time when people came forward to indicate that they were contacted finally after some four days. The question arises as to why those people were not contacted as the first course of action by any responsible party. That question has not been answered and the procedure and House affairs committee may be able to pursue it.
The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader has indicated that they took all possible steps. First of all, there was an apology in the House, and then there was, as I understand it, notification of the clerk of the committee.
I would challenge that that is all possible steps when a situation occurs. I was advised that the first step taken was that the matter was brought to the attention of the chief government whip. I do not know what the rules of the game are, but I understand that was the first step. I can only speculate that that step was taken to make sure that the party's position was well understood on how these matters are handled.
The understanding is, and it was confirmed to me by a member of the Conservative caucus on committee, that the whip's position was that it should be left up to the committee to deal with. That did not happen. The committee did not get it until later. The apology did not come until after the in camera meeting in which the committee first had an opportunity to consider this. We have to ask ourselves, the member found out on the Thursday, I think as people were going home, so there was no real opportunity, but we have an understanding that at the first opportunity matters should be brought before the House. The rule was considered important enough that steps could have been taken to have that done, either directly or indirectly, by the member.
There was also an opportunity all day on Monday, but it did not happen until after the finance committee meeting, where this matter was under full discussion with the members who were just finding out the details. I raise that simply as a matter of fact.
Then there is the issue of mitigating the damage. I would have thought that reasonable recommendation or protocol would have said that there should be a mitigation step taken. How can we make sure this does not happen further? How do we stop that machine that is processing things? It did not happen until the Monday when the in camera meeting was held. From Thursday to Monday there was no communication. I am wondering why the chief government whip did not think it was important for the lobbyists to be advised that they got the report by mistake, that there had been a mistake and they should not circulate it, that they should destroy all these things and confirm that they had done it. It is not a big deal and it did not happen for some period of time.
I am going to disagree with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons that all possible steps were taken. In fact, they were not, and whatever steps were taken, were not taken expeditiously in the public interest and in the interest of Parliament. We should consider that.
I raise this because I do not think members should have to go to anybody to determine what is the appropriate course of action when there is an incident which may have breached the privileges of Parliament or been a matter of contempt of Parliament. There should not be a guessing game as to what are the steps. Members of the procedure and House affairs committee will have an opportunity to consider what happened, how it happened, why it happened and how we can make sure it never happens again. I would encourage them to do that.
There has been a suggestion that there may be a pattern. I wanted to look at this as objectively as I could. Then I heard there was a fourth. That fourth one came out and we were notified at the public meeting of the finance minister last Tuesday when he was before committee, and it was communicated to us that someone had voluntarily come forward and said they got this, et cetera.
We have to wonder whether there are any more. The parliamentary secretary said he contacted the information technology group to examine the hard drive or whatever and found that there is only five.
One of the things I found out was that the person who leaked the report, Mr. Russell Ullyatt, his common law spouse's name is Ashley Brambles. Ashley Brambles is a registered lobbyist and in fact represents and works for the Canadian Medical Association, which appeared before the finance committee on the prebudget consultations. The question about whether it was just five emails is one thing, but I do not know how far five emails flipped and how the pyramid started to grow.
Now we know there is a linked party, a close party who is a lobbyist and has an interest in this. We would have to find out whether or not yet another registered lobbyist had in fact found this out. It is not going to be good enough just to look at the computer. We have to look at some of the other facts and that would be one example.
There is another one which I found kind of interesting. Mr. Ullyatt is the owner of two companies. One of the companies is called Bestmail.ca. Bestmail.ca says the following under “About Us”:
Dedicating ourselves solely to political mailing and fundraising gives Bestmail.ca unique insight into the best practices within the political mail sphere. Having sent over 5 million pieces of mail in the last two years allows us to work with your organization....
In terms of number of employees, it says “n/a”, not applicable or not available.
Mr. Ullyatt has another company called RU Thinking. RU Thinking is the company that owns Bestmail.ca and is involved in similar matters.
I will be receiving a copy of a picture of a printing press which was in the corridor outside the office of the member in question. It is not a computer printer; I will find out what it was, but it appears to be a commercial printer. I also found out that the amount in the last business year of the materials and supplies expenses for the member's office seemed to be extraordinarily high relative to those of other hon. members. I will not go through the details, but it would raise some questions about what else was happening in the office. What was Mr. Russell Ullyatt doing in that office? What business was he transacting in that office? What people was he dealing with in that office? What was his job in that office?
We do not have the tools to do this, but the procedure and House affairs committee may. If Mr. Ullyatt was in fact conducting commercial businesses out of that office using commercial printers and House of Commons materials and supplies for these millions of pieces of communications going out, either electronically or otherwise, through a couple of companies, this lends some potential credibility to the idea that maybe there is much more to this than we know. Is this part of the culture? Is this part of the routine? Is this part of challenging the facts, switching the channel and blaming somebody else?
The member for South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale even demanded that I apologize for bringing to the attention of the House that there was a fourth email. He is on the finance committee. He was at the meeting when it was received and he knows it was at a public meeting with the finance minister with regard to the budget. It was a public meeting. He stood and said I should apologize because I leaked something that happened at an in camera meeting. That is not true. The subject matter of a leak occurred during an in camera meeting, but this particular information was elsewhere. He raised it. I got on my feet and said the member had his facts wrong, that I got the information, as did all other hon. members, on the day following.
Then the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons gets up twice and refers to that and says that the member refuses to apologize, even though I explained why it was not applicable to apologize for something that did not happen. Therefore, the government is continuing to try to switch the channel to try to put the blame elsewhere.
I have this feeling that there is much more going on here. I have this feeling that when a member has to go the government whip to get instructions on how to handle it and the government whip does not say the most important thing and mitigate the downside, fix it because it is a serious problem. I do not think he said that. I have a feeling the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs will be able to determine those facts.
Public interest is the most important issue. We talk about the institutional importance, and the word “dysfunction” has been used often about this place. However, it started with a 200-page manual on how to disrupt committees in the House, which was made by the former House leader of the Conservative Party. It was applied time and time again, whether it be the in and out hearings by the Conservative Party, which had charges against it for laundering money during an election campaign, or on the whole issue of the violation of Access to Information Act by a staffer. The current House leader came to the House and said that government staffers were not responsible, that it was the minister who was responsible. I do not see them saying today that the minister or member is responsible for the actions of his or her people.
Now we have the government saying two things, depending on the circumstances. If it is going to be the victim, it certainly is going to say no, that this is the way it is going to be. I hope the procedure and House affairs committee will consider that we do need a protocol. We need to deal with things on an expedited basis. We really have to consider whether the Parliament of Canada and the public interest has to wait until the committee actually reports when there is an apparent breach of confidentiality or a contempt of Parliament. That is not in the best interests of Parliament or the public. We have to consider if we have a situation and a configuration at committee, where it is not possible for a consensus at a committee to issue a report, that a serious item that happened in committee may never come out. This is wrong.
I certainly support the motion of the member for Outremont to send this to procedure and House affairs. I do know it has an obligation to deal with it first before other business, but we have to convey to committee members, should this vote carry, that we have to find out what we can learn from this experience. We do not want this to be repeated. We want it to get out to absolutely everybody who has all kinds of interesting things going on that it is time to clean up their act. It is time for this place to clean up its act because we are in a profession that is not held in high esteem. This matter is not helping. I believe the appropriate step is to get it to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs so we can start down the road toward getting the House back into a position of being a profession held in high esteem.
